Authentic Leadership: A Self, Leader, and Spiritual Identity Perspective

In this paper, I introduce a model of authentic leadership that rests on a single explanatory concept— identity—which specifies three interrelated identity systems: the self-identity system, the leader-identity system, and the spiritual-identity system, which, in turn, are comprised of multiple subidentities that include cognitive, affective, and conative elements. I offer a construct definition of authentic leadership that is explicated in a theoretical model which draws from humanistic psychology, existential philosophy, and social identity as well as self-categorization theory, leader prototypicality, and spiritual leadership theory. The fundamental premise of this paper is that spirituality and spiritual identity are at the core of authentic leadership. While much work remains to be done in terms of sharpening construct definitions of authentic leadership and operationalizing it, in the opinion of this author, authentic leadership is an important and provocative concept that holds promise for multiparadigmatic and multimethodological theoretical and empirical research. The authentic self is the soul made visible